Analyzing the Patterns of Industry Payments in Urology: A Benchmark Comparison With Other Surgical Specialties

To examine differences in industry payments across multiple surgical specialties and to examine differences in payments to pediatric urologists (PU) with other urologic subspecialists (UO).

The 2022 Open Payments dataset was downloaded from the Center for Medicare and Medicaid website. Industry payments were collected for urologists, otolaryngologists (ENT), orthopedic (Ortho), and plastic (Plastics) surgeons for comparison. Descriptive statistics with Kruskal-Wallis and chi-square tests were performed to evaluate payment distributions across these specialties and between PU and OU.

In 2022, industry payments were reported to 9686 urologists. Ortho received the highest number and dollar amount of payments, with 315,664 payments valuing nearly $600 million. Urologists received 207,961 payments at $33.5 million, Plastics with 58,446 at $93 million, and ENT with 70,006 payments and $13.7 million. The specialties had statistically significantly different distribution of payments in total number and amount of money paid (P <.0001). PU received 906 payments and $162,826, versus OU with 207,055 payments valuing $33.4 million, and the distribution of these payments was also significantly different (P <.0001).

The distribution of payments differed significantly across the surgical sub-specialties examined. There was also a staggering difference in industry payments between PU and other urologists, which highlights a disparity in interactions between medical device and pharmaceutical companies even within the specialty of urology.